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Russian President Putin: Going to the toilet with five bodyguards?
Photo:
SPUTNIK / REUTERS
Vladimir Putin is a man shrouded in mystery, he himself is very actively involved in it.
There are the phases when the Russian President simply disappeared temporarily.
There are the overly long tables at which people often have to sit down, the quarantine regulations for visitors and staff.
There's the fact that often no one really knows where the Warlord actually is at the moment.
And there is one detail, but a revealing one: Paris Match reported this week that Putin's bodyguards always had to seize the president's feces and urine on trips abroad and transport them to Moscow, neatly packaged and transported in a special suitcase.
The report will fuel speculation about Putin's health.
And it goes well with a 2019 video showing Putin exiting a toilet in Paris's Elysée Palace, accompanied by a whopping five men, one carrying a thick briefcase.
A sixth stands guard outside the door.
The three rules of thumb
Putin's statements often seem puzzling, as do the subordinates who speak on his behalf.
Especially in political Berlin one sometimes seems to have problems distinguishing when Putin means what he says, when he really means the opposite - and when he is lying.
The distinction is usually quite simple.
There are three simple rules of thumb to apply to three common categories of Putin's statements.
Category 1:
It should have been clear to Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz at the latest since February 24
that Putin lies
when he wants to calm down .
As is well known, the invasion of Ukraine began a few days after the supposed peace talks with the two.
Scholz sat across from Putin at that famous long table a full nine days before the invasion.
Macron and Scholz apparently wanted to believe his supposedly peaceful intentions, despite all warnings from the United States.
Another example of the first category are the so-called »humanitarian corridors«.
Putin and his people have been promising the civilian population of Ukraine safe escape corridors since the beginning of March.
Syrians who have experience with the kind of promises Putin makes warn even then against putting too much stock in such promises.
Of course they were right: the "corridors" were repeatedly shot at.
Almost more cynical are the proposed "corridors" that should lead directly to Russian territory or to Belarus.
The culmination of communicative cynicism from the Kremlin so far, however, is the award given to the brigade held responsible for the horrific murders of civilians in Bucha.
Putin praised the soldiers who allegedly tortured, shot people off bicycles, or first tied up and then executed them in Bucha for their "skillful and decisive action", for "courage, determination and great professionalism".
He had previously described the reports on the crimes in Bucha as "fake".
The rest of the Russian troops may have taken this as explicit encouragement and carte blanche for further massive atrocities.
What already seems to come true in the most appalling way.
Of course, Ukrainians have long since understood that Putin lies constantly and strategically.
They will therefore do the devil and, as recently demanded by the would-be tsar, remove the mines off their Black Sea ports.
Putin had named this as a condition for grain exports to Africa - and "promised" that the Russian military would then not use it for attacks.
Rule of thumb 1:
If Putin calms down, denies, promises or appeases, then he is lying
.
Category 2
: Reports of the type
"Putin warns" and "Putin threatens"
have become a kind of journalistic genre in their own right in recent years, even more so in the days since the invasion of Ukraine.
Even before the war, Putin liked to warn him often: sometimes unspecifically about "provocations" from abroad, sometimes concrete and personalized when it came to insubordinate journalists.
Since the beginning of the war, Putin has been tirelessly busy: He "warned" Sweden and Finland against joining NATO, Germany and France against arms deliveries, NATO against the establishment of a no-fly zone, and the whole world against the fact that Russia does have nuclear weapons.
And more and more often he threatens openly.
Only one thing can be reliably deduced from this: all the threats and warnings tell the world what Putin does not want.
In view of the Kremlin's willingness to lie, manipulate and murder, which has been documented for decades, it is generally not advisable to act accordingly.
It is also important that when Putin threatens, that does not mean that he will carry out these threats.
Nevertheless,
rule of thumb is: If Putin says what he doesn't want, he means it.
Category 3
: There are many direct quotes from Putin that, in retrospect, pose a mystery.
The mystery is how Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Francois Hollande and all the others could be so blind.
Time and time again, Vladimir Putin has said publicly and very clearly that he does not recognize Ukraine as a state, that he considers it part of Russia, long before the invasion of Crimea in 2014. Putin did not keep it a secret, in Opposite.
When it
comes to his great power fantasy
, the wannabe tsar is downright transparent.
In the summer of 2021, this essay from his pen was then published: »On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians«.
If the three rules of thumb had been observed at the time, it should have been clear that this was a category three message, i.e. a completely serious declaration of intent.
But in the West people still preferred to believe that they could better judge for themselves what Putin is serious about and what isn't.
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Putin is currently distributing many category 3 messages, and one should listen carefully.
This applies not least to the former Soviet republics, where fear is currently spreading.
When Putin met the heads of state of his last remaining vassals in a pompous setting in the Alexander Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, the five gentlemen from Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan must have been pretty nervous.
Because they know what the ruler of the Kremlin really thinks of their autonomy: According to Putin, the self-proclaimed reformer of the Russian empire, it is only borrowed.
"We must overcome the phobias of the past, the fear of a resurrection of the Soviet Union and the Soviet empire," Putin said two years ago. "The understanding that unification is for the benefit of all will inevitably break ground."
The experienced Russia expert Christian Neef just recalled this in SPIEGEL.
Neef interprets these words from the perspective of the former Soviet republics as follows: "Since Putin's invasion of Ukraine, even the last of the Moscow satellites has known what this hint means: nobody is safe from the Russian urge to expand."
The five heads of state who are now - of course with a lot of distance!
– were allowed to sit at a table with Putin, represent the member states of the so-called Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
That is, so to speak, the pitiful remainder of the Warsaw Pact.
As is well known, the other former Soviet republics and the rest of the Warsaw Pact countries have long distanced themselves from Russia, and some have joined NATO.
It is perfectly clear that Putin sees it as his historic mission to undo this "tragedy," as he once called it: "What we have worked for over 1,000 years was lost to a significant extent."
In St. Petersburg he did it again this week.
At a meeting with young entrepreneurs in his birthplace, Putin explained his historical connection to Peter the Great.
At the time he was at war with Sweden, and it may seem “as if he had taken something away from them (the Swedes).
He didn't take anything from them, he took something back (which belonged to Russia).'
And further: »Obviously it is also our purpose to retrieve and fortify.
And if we start from the fact that these core values form the basis of our existence, we will certainly be successful in tackling the tasks ahead.«
Category 3 probably doesn't need much more explanation.
Putin's imperial dreams don't end with conquering Ukraine, no matter how bad things are going at the moment.
He sees himself as the rebuilder of a Russian empire that belongs to Russia - and mentions Sweden, which is striving for NATO membership, in passing, but certainly not by accident.
Rule of thumb 3: When Putin raves about Russian dreams of becoming a great power, when he speaks of "retrieving" and "unification" - then he means it absolutely seriously.
The alliance against Putin and also Chancellor Olaf Scholz should draw the inevitable conclusions from these three rules of thumb: You can't negotiate with Putin and his innermost circle of imperial-minded KGB kleptocrats.
You have to curb their power.
As fast as possible.